After
a 5AM departure and a 2 1/2 hour bus trip, you arrive at Cardiac Hill, the way
up the ridge. I dozed through the trip, opening my eyes whenever the bus slowed
town, to see the kangaroo. Made it up the hill at the guide's brisk pace, althogh
I felt a bit woozy for a few minutes after.

View
from the top.

There's
a layer of rock underneath the surface that includes lots of tiny silicate globules,
and it holds water. The plant sinks a taproot into a pool. When that's exhausted,
the runner root grows laterally and sinks another taproot.

Fossilized
mud ripples from a lake bed.

Desert
plums. More bitter and higher in Vitamin C.

On
the rocks.

Looks
like elemental sulfur; they're lichens.

Darwin
award: four people have lunged off this cliff after blown-away caps.

Ghost
gum. The tree is used to make white face paint. It glows faintly in the dark--you
can also paint your whole body and scare away intruders. The locals had that
figured out before Doyle wrote Hound of the Baskervilles.

The
cliff face sheared off 60 years ago.

Boulders
at the bottom.

This
fire-savy tree has its trunk underground. What you see is branches.

Truck
stop where we ate lunch. If you want camel and allegator pizza, you'll have
to come here. (I got the roast capsicum soup with bread.)